New computer - Griphook

I built a new computer! JH helped and is now a master of the philips screw driver.

I've been on the Apple bandwagon for a long time now, so I haven't built my own computer since 2005.  That computer had a whole gigabyte of RAM - even smart phones come with 2-4GB now.  I've been gaming on a work-provided laptop for a few years and it rapidly became unable to keep up with modern games.  A friend made an initial list of parts for me on PC Part Picker, which I tweaked a bit to get my final setup.  PC Part Picker  is a great website.  It lets you start out with a few computer parts and then helps you pick other compatible parts by filtering out anything that won't work with, say, the motherboard you picked.  When you pick the parts, it'll also show you the lowest prices from a bunch of different retailers (like Amazon and Newegg).

My final configuration:

  • AMD Ryzen 5 1600 3.2 Ghz, 6 Core CPU
  • Gigabyte GA-AB350-GAMING 3 ATX AM4 motherboard
  • Two sticks of 8GB Corsair LPX DDR4-2133 RAM
  • SanDisk Ultra 3D 500 GB SSD (main drive)
  • Western Digital RE 2TB 3.5" 7200 RPM HDD (secondary drive)
  • MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6GB video card
  • Gigabyte GC-WB867D-I WiFi (a/b/g/n/ac) and Bluetooth 4.2 card
  • Corsair 270R ATX case
  • Corsair CX 550W power supply
  • Logitech G703 wireless mouse
  • Logitech G610 mechanical keyboard (with Cherry MX brown switches, of course).

Of course, the new computer blows the laptop away.  I benchmarked both, and the new computer scored five times higher in the graphics test.  But I knew I could get a little bit more performance out of the new one, so I had a custom decal made at StickerYou.com and my computer is now 23% faster!  My only gripe is that a week after I finished putting it all together, the price on the newer version of the CPU dropped to the same price I paid for mine.  Ah well, that'll give me something to upgrade to next year.

Update 10/16/2021

Some upgrades happened:

  • OS drive is now a Crucial P5 500GB NVMe
  • Data drive is now a 2TB SanDisk SSD Plus (SATA)

Disk benchmarks comparing the old SATA SSD to the NVMe:

Update 1/10/2022

Upgraded the CPU from the Ryzen 5 1600 to Ryzen 5 3600. It's very nice.

Update 10/17/2022

With GPU prices finally coming down, I was able to buy an MSI RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G OC.

This article was updated on January 6, 2019