Building My New PC

After about five years of hard work, my computer died. It served me well through the pandemic, handling school, gaming, and a media server almost 24/7. Sadly, one cold January morning, I went to turn it on and got nothing after hitting the power button. I did my best to investigate the issue, including replacing the CMOS battery and shorting the power pins in case the power button was no longer working. Considering there was no power getting to the board, I narrowed down the cause to either the power supply or the motherboard itself. Unfortunately, testing a different power supply, which I know works, had the same result.

At this point, replacing the motherboard on this computer would be a pain. My concern was that to replace the motherboard, I would also need to get a new processor since the socket I needed for my current CPU is so old I would only be able to find a second-hand board. Similarly, my memory was outdated, and most new boards are now built for DDR5, which would cost me extra. In the end, I took this as a sign that it was time to build a new computer for myself.

Of course, this isn't the end of the road for my old computer. Any of the parts that still work will end up being used. I have already repurposed my SSD and RAM as upgrades for my home lab server. I still have a perfectly good GPU and CPU as well, which I am sure I will find a project for. Nevertheless, my old computer has been relegated to its final resting place - the closet.

Now, Project: New Computer was a complete go. I put together my build on PCPartPicker, which makes it very easy to confirm that all of the parts will fit together. The tool evaluates the compatibility of ports and sockets in addition to looking at part sizes for case clearance, power consumption, and charts prices. Here is the link to the complete build, but I will list the basic specs here:

• Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 9700X (3.8GHz, 8 Cores)
• Graphics: Gigabyte GAMING OC Radeon RX 7700 XT 12 GB
• Memory: 64GB (4 x 16GB) TeamGroup T-Create DDDR5-6000 RAM
• Storage: 4TB (2 x 2TB) Silicon Power M.2 NVMe SSD

I have experience building about a dozen or so computers. Some of them have been my own, but many belonged to my friends. When I was in late middle school/early high school, I would try to convince my friends to let me spec out a computer based on their budget and let me build it. My reason for doing this was twofold: I wanted to play games with my friends on the same platform and to mess around with more computer parts. I had a lot of fun going over to people's houses and putting together their computers for them. Almost every build had its own unique challenges that presented a learning experience for me.

This build was probably the most challenging one I have done, but it was still relatively straightforward. The only difficulties came from some of the quirks with the Lian Li A3-mATX case that housed the computer. In the past, every computer I have worked on has had at least a mid-tower ATX case, making it very spacious and easy to work on. There is less room to work with here, and fitting the power supply and graphics card together was a bit like Tetris.

The power supply is installed on a bracket that hangs from the front or side of the case and has several different mounting positions at various heights based on the power supply's size and where the power cable's connector is located. I initially mounted it in such a way that allowed enough room to have a fan above the power supply. When it came time to install the graphics card, however, the edge of the card hit where the modular power supply cables were connected to the unit. So, I ultimately had to sacrifice one of my top case fans and move the power supply up to get everything in place.

Overall, I am very happy with how my new computer came out. It was high time I got rid of all my obnoxious RGB lights and went for something a little more refined. I think the wood used on the case's front panel really gives the computer a classy vibe. Despite this computer looking less flashy and being significantly smaller than my old one, it is substantially more powerful, and I am looking forward to getting a ton of use out of it!