Lessons from building a PC.

For a while now I have been using my desktop PC as my main system, I prefer my laptop to my phone, and my desktop to them both which seems backwards compared to the popular trend of smaller and lighter computers and favoring phones and tablets running phone software over traditional computing powerhouses. As a programmer, hobbyist, enthusiast, and gamer I cannot understand this trend of ditching traditional computers for phones, though I can understand wanting a small and light laptop at the expense of power, though I cannot understand why a PC is neglected in that case as a general work horse to cover for the lack of power in the laptop.

I built my PC long before I needed it, this was due to all the parts I wanted going on sale at the same time for deals that I could not pass over. I built it with expansion in mind as things like RAM are very expensive right now and I don't need them just yet.

Specs:

1. CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 1600X not yet over clocked
2. GPU - AMD Radeon rx 580 8GB GDDR5 - Sapphire Nitro version - You need a GPU to add a screen to Ryzen at least when I bought it
3. 16GB DDR4 RAM configured as 1x 16GB Corsair vengeance RAM with the lowest latency I could find
4. 512GB Samsung PRO M.2 SSD, NVMe based
5. EVGA 1000 watt PSU similar to this but the mother board connector is not detachable.
6. All resting on the ASUS ROG Strix B350-F full ATX motherboard which was the cheapeast in stock at the time due to the sale.

Although I should have used 2 or 4 sticks of RAM with less capacity if I wanted to stay within recommended configurations, I left 3 slots open for expansion when the cost falls, and I bought 16GB when I only really need 6 or 8GB because 16GB sticks should have plenty of capacity for my future expansion once prices fall.

My CPU came without a heat sink and the only one in stock large enough to handle a future over clock was the Corsair H100i v2 AIO water cooler, the sale made it the same price as an air cooler so I was happy to take the aesthetic upgrade. Six cores are nice but I only ever use 3 so accidentally leaving a heavy application running makes little to no perceivable dip in performance for me.

About six months before building the machine I purchased the power supply, this was because I had some cards to try out in a loaned machine with a power supply barely big enough for its modest CPU. I had no idea how big I needed for this rig I would build but I knew I going to have multiple GPU's installed so I went overkill with a 1000 watt unit. The advantage despite the price of a vastly over sized power supply is the unit's eco mode which powers off the fan below a temperature threshold rarely powers up the fan unless the entire system is under an artificial stress test load. It's also got plenty of room to expand and remain in the most efficient part of its efficiency curve.

The SSD was the right price, thats the only reason I bought it. As a 512 GB pro model with very good speeds it has a hefty price tag normally but I got it for less than my vastly inferior SATA based SSD. It was less to buy this SSD than to buy the consumer model which was not on sale at the time.

My GPU handles loads quite well, I notice buttery smooth game play even with a spare monitor connected for other programs like recorders with noise levels low enough my CPU fans drown out the GPU fans. The only game it has trouble with is Factorio, I don't think this is a fault of the card or my CPU because my vastly inferior laptop is exactly the same with the stuttering and 56 FPS maximum. This was not an issue until a certain upgrade, and the game is in preview so I expect this is an optimization issue and not a hardware or software issue. I purchased an AMD graphics card because although the gap between AMD and Nvidia is narrow I hear more efficiency in computing on GPU from AMD than Nvidia, and since I built this rig as a work station and not a gaming machine I prioritized computing over gaming. I also purchased an AMD unit because of crossfire which is more friendly to me than SLI due to less restrictions on hardware and software. I am impressed with the cooling system but I feel my airflow needs tweaking as I can feel hot spots under the card where there should be cool, fresh air. This issue will be rectified once I get some new case fans and move one cable that is blocking one of the card's exhaust areas.

My only issue with the motherboard is the placement of the PCIe slots, I wish they moved the SSD space down and moved the full sized slots up exactly one spot so that I could physically fit 3 cards in my case without an extension cable. Moving the PCIe slots would also allow a better view of the LED lit chipset heatsink which is decorative and would be nice to see rather than hidden by the video card.

I learned that sometimes following the manual is a bad idea, my AIO cooler manual says to hook the two fans into the pump block and plug the pump into the CPU fan header but this draws too much current for my motherboard and it's better for BIOS fan control to hook the two fans into the CPU fan headers and the pump block into the dedicated AIO pump header. I also learned how much more pleasant gaming hardware is to work with than the hardware in typical consumer computers, my memory was not installed correctly when I pulled it to work on something near by to lower risk of damaging my only memory module, and some POST code lights helped me figure out it was a memory issue and re-seat the module, there was no video output so those lights saved me a lot of trouble. A luxury I did not have on any consumer machines I've worked with.

This project taught me about cable management and airflow, and I'm about to make a serial port and SATA bracket for my micro controller programming and RAID with my hard drives in their external enclosure. I also learned to check ho many drives physically fit into a computer case before buying it but I still did not have much choice at the time. the case i have will only hold 4 desktop drives but it would fit 5 or 6 mobile drives.